I try not to think about that night, because it gave me nightmares. It happened when I was pretty little, like eight. Sometimes I thought maybe I just dreamed it, because the next time Lou came he acted just like normal. He even smiled at me a little bit. Before he stopped coming here, Lou was nice to me every day after that.
Ms. Manigat did not sound surprised when I told her what Lou said about putting me to sleep. “Yes, Jay,” she told me, “For a long time, there have been people outside who didn’t think we should be taking care of you.”
I never knew that before!
I remember a long time ago, when I was really little and I had pneumonia, my mom was scared to leave me alone at the hospital. “They won’t know how to take care of Jay there,” she said to my dad, even though she didn’t know I heard her. I had to stay by myself all night, and because of what my mom said, I couldn’t go to sleep. I was afraid everyone at the hospital would forget I was there. Or maybe something bad would happen to me.
It seems like the lights go off every other day now. And I know people must really miss Lou, because the dirty gray water is all over the floor outside my glass and there’s no one to clean it up.
February 14
6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3
6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3
6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3
I remember the numbers already! I have been saying them over and over in my head so I won’t forget, but I wanted to write them down in the exact right order to be extra sure. I want to know them without even looking.
Oh, I should start at the beginning. Yesterday, no one brought me any dinner, not even Ms. Manigat. She came with a huge bowl of oatmeal this morning, saying she was very sorry. She said she had to look a long time to find that food, and it wore her out. The oatmeal wasn’t even hot, but I didn’t say anything. I just ate. She watched me eating.
She didn’t stay with me long, because she doesn’t teach me lessons anymore. After the French doctor left, we talked about the Emancipation Proclamation and Martin Luther King, but she didn’t bring that up today. She just kept sighing, and she said she had been in bed all day yesterday because she was so tired, and she was sorry she forgot to feed me. She said I couldn’t count on Rene to bring me food because she didn’t know where Rene was. It was hard for me to hear her talk through her hot suit today. Her mask was crooked, so the microphone wasn’t in front of her mouth where it should be.
She saw my notebook and asked if she could look at it. I said sure. She looked at the pages from the beginning. She said she liked the part where I said she was my best friend. Her face-mask was fogging up, so I couldn’t see her eyes and I couldn’t tell if she was smiling. I am very sure she did not put her suit on right today.
When she put my notebook down, she told me to pay close attention to her and repeat the numbers she told me, which were 6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3.
I asked her what they were. She said it was the security code for my door. She said she wanted to give the code to me because my buzzer wasn’t working, and I might need to leave my room if she overslept and nobody came to bring me food. She told me I could use the same code on the elevator, and the kitchen was on the third floor. There wouldn’t be anybody there, she said, but I could look on the shelves, the top ones up high, to see if there was any food. If not, she said I should take the stairs down to the first floor and find the red EXIT sign to go outside. She said the elevator doesn’t go to the first floor anymore.
I felt scared then, but she put her hand on top of my head again just like usual. She said she was sure there was plenty of food outside.
“But am I allowed?” I asked her. “What if people get sick?”
“You worry so much, little man,” she said. “Only you matter now, my little one-of-a-kind.”
But see I’m sure Ms. Manigat doesn’t really want me to go outside. I’ve been thinking about that over and over. Ms. Manigat must be very tired to tell me to do something like that. Maybe she has a fever and that’s why she told me how to get out of my room. My brother said silly things when he had a fever, and my father too. My father kept calling me Oscar, and I didn’t know who Oscar was. My dad told us he had a brother who died when he was little, and maybe his name was Oscar. My mother didn’t say anything at all when she got sick. She just died very fast. I wish I could find Ms. Manigat and give her something to drink. You get very thirsty when you have a fever, which I know for a fact. But I can’t go to her because I don’t know where she is. And besides, I don’t know where Dr. Ben keeps the hot suits. What if I went to her and she wasn’t wearing hers?
Maybe the oatmeal was the only thing left in the kitchen, and now I ate it all. I hope not! But I’m thinking maybe it is because I know Ms. Manigat would have brought me more food if she could have found it. She’s always asking me if I have enough to eat. I’m already hungry again.
6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3
6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3
February 15
I am writing in the dark. The lights are off. I tried to open my lock but the numbers don’t work because of the lights being off. I don’t know where Ms. Manigat is. I’m trying not to cry.
What if the lights never come back on?
February 16
There’s so much I want to say but I have a headache from being hungry. When the lights came back on I went out into the hall like Ms. M told me and I used the numbers to get the elevator to work and then I went to the kitchen like she said. I wanted to go real fast and find some peanut butter or some Oreos or even a can of beans I could open with the can opener Ms. M left me at Thanksgiving.
There’s no food in the kitchen! There’s empty cans and wrappers on the floor and even roaches but I looked on every single shelf and in every cabinet and I couldn’t find anything to eat.
The sun was shining really REALLY bright from the window. I almost forgot how the sun looks. When I went to the window I saw a big, empty parking lot outside. At first I thought there were diamonds all over the ground because of the sparkles but it was just a lot of broken glass. I could only see one car and I thought it was Ms. M’s. But Ms. M would never leave her car looking like that. For one thing it had two flat tires!
Anyway I don’t think there’s anybody here today. So I thought of a plan. I have to go now.
Ms. M, this is for you—or whoever comes looking for me. I know somebody will find this notebook if I leave it on my bed. I’m very sorry I had to leave in such a hurry.
I didn’t want to go outside but isn’t it okay if it’s an emergency? I am really really hungry. I’ll just find some food and bring it with me and I’ll come right back. I’m leaving my door open so I won’t get locked out. Ms. M, maybe I’ll find your garden with cassavas and akee like you showed me and I’ll know the good parts from the bad parts. If someone sees me and I get in trouble I’ll just say I didn’t have anything to eat.
Whoever is reading this don’t worry. I’ll tell everybody I see please please not to get too close to me. I know Dr. Ben was very worried I might make somebody sick.
Originally published in 2000 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction—five years after the publication of my first novel—“Patient Zero” was my first published short story. I vowed that I would continue writing short fiction, despite the demands of my life as a new novelist. It was included in two best-of-the-year science fiction anthologies and remains one of my most beloved short stories. Jay’s loneliness and innocence still break my heart.
Danger Word
(Written with Steven Barnes)
When Kendrick opened his eyes, Grandpa Joe was standing over his bed, a tall dark bulk dividing the morning light. Grandpa Joe’s beard covered his dark chin like a coat of snow. Mom used to say that guardian angels watched over you while you slept, and Grandpa Joe looked like he might have been guarding him all night with his shotgun. Kendrick didn’t believe in guardian angels anymore, but he was glad he could believe in Grandpa Joe.
Most mornings, Kendrick opened his eyes to only strangeness: dark, heavy curtains; wo
oden planks for walls; a brownish-gray stuffed owl mounted near the window with glassy black eyes that twitched as the sun set, or seemed to. A rough pine bed. And that smell everywhere, like the smell in Mom and Dad’s closet. Cedar, Grandpa Joe told him. Grandpa Joe’s big hard hands had made the whole cabin of it, one board and beam at a time.
For the last six months, this had been his room, but it still wasn’t, really. His Spider-Man bedsheets weren’t here. His G.I. Joes, Tonka trucks and Matchbox racetracks weren’t here. His posters of Iron Man and Kobie weren’t on the walls. This was his bed, but it wasn’t his room.
“Up and at ’em, Little Soldier,” Grandpa Joe said, using the nickname Mom had never liked. Grandpa was dressed in his hickory shirt and blue jeans, the same clothes he wore every day. He leaned on his rifle like a cane, so his left knee must be hurting him like it always did in the mornings. He’d hurt it long ago, in Vietnam.
“I’m going trading down to Mike’s. You can come if you want, or I can leave you with the Dog-Girl. Up to you.” Grandpa’s voice was morning-rough. “Either way, it’s time to get out of bed, sleepyhead.”
Dog-Girl, the woman who lived in a house on a hill by herself fifteen minute’s walk west, was their closest neighbor. Once upon a time she’d had six pit bulls that paraded up and down her fence. In the last month that number had dropped to three. Grandpa Joe said meat was getting scarce. Hard to keep six dogs fed, even if you needed them. The dogs wagged their tails when Kendrick came up to the fence because Dog-Girl had introduced him to them, but Grandpa Joe said those dogs could tear a man’s arms off.
Don’t you ever stick your hand in there, Grandpa Joe always said. Just because a dog looks friendly don’t mean he is. Especially when he’s hungry.
“Can I have a Coke?” Kendrick said, surprised to hear his own voice again, so much smaller than Grandpa Joe’s, almost a little girl’s. Kendrick hadn’t planned to say anything today, but he wanted the Coke so bad he could almost taste the fizz; it would taste like a treat from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
“If Mike’s got one, you’ll get one. For damn sure.” Grandpa Joe’s grin widened until Kendrick could see the hole where his tooth used to be: his straw-hole, Grandpa Joe called it. He mussed Kendrick’s hair with his big palm. “Good boy, Kendrick. You keep it up. I knew your tongue was in there somewhere. You better start using it, or you’ll forget how. Hear me? You start talking again, and I’ll whip you up a lumberjack breakfast, like before.”
It would be good to eat one of Grandpa Joe’s famous lumberjack breakfasts again, piled nearly to the ceiling: A bowl of fluffy eggs, a stack of pancakes, a plate full of bacon and sausage, and homemade biscuits to boot. Grandpa Joe had learned to cook in the Army.
But whenever Kendrick thought about talking, his stomach filled up like a balloon and he thought he would puke. Some things couldn’t be said out loud, and some things shouldn’t. There was more to talking than most people thought. A whole lot more.
Kendrick’s eye went to the bandage on Grandpa Joe’s left arm, just below his elbow, where the tip peeked out at the edge of his shirtsleeve. Grandpa Joe had said he’d hurt himself chopping wood yesterday, and Kendrick’s skin had hardened when he’d seen a spot of blood on the bandage. He hadn’t seen blood in a long time. He couldn’t see any blood now, but Kendrick still felt worried. Mom said Grandpa Joe didn’t heal as fast as other people because of his diabetes. What if something happened to him? He was old. Something could.
“That six-point we brought down will bring a good haul at Mike’s. We’ll trade jerky for gas. Don’t like to be low on gas,” Grandpa said. His foot slid a little on the braided rug as he turned to leave the room, and Kendrick thought he heard him hiss with pain under his breath. “And we’ll get that Coke for you. Whaddya say, Little Soldier?”
Kendrick couldn’t make any words come out of this mouth this time, but at least he was smiling, and smiling felt good. They had something to smile about, for once.
Three days ago, a buck had come to drink from the creek.
Through the kitchen window, Kendrick had seen something move—antlers, it turned out—and Grandpa Joe grabbed his rifle when Kendrick motioned. Before the shot exploded, Kendrick had seen the buck look up, and Kendrick thought It knows. The buck’s black eyes reminded him of Dad’s eyes when he had listened to the news on the radio in the basement, hunched over his desk with a headset. Kendrick had guessed it was bad news from the trapped look in his father’s eyes.
Dad would be surprised at how good Kendrick was with a rifle now. He could blow away an empty Chef Boyardee Ravioli can from twenty yards. He’d learned how to aim on Max Payne and Medal of Honor, but Grandpa Joe had taught him how to shoot for real, a little every day. Grandpa Joe had a room full of guns and ammunition—the back shed he kept locked—so they never ran low on bullets. Kendrick supposed he would have to shoot a deer one day soon. Or an elk. Or something else. The time would come, Grandpa Joe said, when he would have to make a kill whether he wanted to or not. You may have to kill to survive, Kendrick, he said. I know you’re only nine, but you need to be sure you can do it.
Before everything changed, Grandpa Joe used to ask Mom and Dad if he could teach Kendrick how to hunt during summer vacation, and they’d said no. Dad didn’t like Grandpa much, maybe because Grandpa Joe always said what he thought, and he was Mom’s father, not his. And Mom didn’t go much easier on him, always telling Grandpa Joe no, no matter what he asked. No, you can’t keep him longer than a couple weeks in the summer. No, you can’t teach him shooting. No, you can’t take him hunting.
Now, there was no one to say no. No one except Grandpa Joe, unless Mom and Dad came back. Grandpa Joe had said they might, and they knew where to find him. They might.
Kendrick put on the red down jacket he’d been wearing the day Grandpa Joe found him. He’d sat in this for neverending hours in the safe room at home, the storage space under the stairs with a reinforced door, a chemical toilet and enough food and water for a month. Mom had sobbed, “Bolt the door tight. Stay here, Kendrick, and don’t open the door until you hear Grandpa’s ‘danger word’—NO MATTER WHAT.”
She made him swear to Jesus, and she’d never made him swear to Jesus before. He’d been afraid to move or breathe. He’d heard other footsteps in the house, the awful sound of crashing and breaking. A single terrible scream. It could have been his mother, or father, or neither—he just didn’t know.
Followed by silence; for one hour, two, three. Then, the hardest part. The worst part.
Show me your math homework, Kendrick.
The danger word was the special word he and Grandpa Joe had picked because Grandpa Joe had insisted on it. Grandpa Joe had made a special trip in his truck to tell them something bad could happen to them, and he had a list of reasons how and why. Dad didn’t like Grandpa Joe’s yelling much, but he’d listened. So Kendrick and Grandpa Joe had made up a danger word nobody else knew in the world, not even Mom and Dad.
And he had to wait to hear the danger word, Mom said.
No matter what.
By the time Kendrick dressed, Grandpa was already outside loading the truck, a beat-up navy blue Chevy. Kendrick heard a thud as he dropped a large sack of wrapped jerky in the bed.
Grandpa Joe had taught him how to mix up the secret jerky recipe he hadn’t even given Mom: soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, fresh garlic cloves, dried pepper, onion powder. He’d made sure Kendrick was paying attention while strips of deer meat soaked in that tangy mess for two days, and then spent twelve hours in the slow-cook oven. Grandpa Joe had also made him watch as he cut the deer open and its guts flopped to the ground, all gray and glistening. Watch, boy. Don’t turn away. Don’t be scared to look at something for what it is.
Grandpa Joe’s deer jerky was almost as good as the lumberjack breakfast, and Kendrick’s mouth used to water for it. Not anymore.
His jerky loaded, Grandpa Joe leaned against the truck, lighting a brown cigarette. Kendrick thought he s
houldn’t be smoking.
“Ready?”
Kendrick nodded. His hands shook a little every time he got in the truck, so he hid his hands in his jacket pockets. Some wadded-up toilet paper from the safe room in Longview was still in there, a souvenir. Kendrick clung to the wad, squeezing his hand into a fist.
“We do this right, we’ll be back in less than an hour,” Grandpa Joe said. He spit, as if the cigarette had come apart in his mouth. “Forty-five minutes.”
Forty-five minutes. That wasn’t bad. Forty-five minutes, then they’d be back.
Kendrick stared at the cabin in his rearview mirror until the trees hid it from his sight.
The road was empty, as usual. Grandpa Joe’s rutted dirt road spilled onto the highway after a half-mile, and they jounced past darkened, abandoned houses. Kendrick saw three stray dogs trot out of the open door of a pink two-story house on the corner. He’d never seen that door open before, and he wondered whose dogs they were. He wondered what they’d been eating.
Suddenly, Kendrick wished he’d stayed back at Dog-Girl’s. She was from England and he couldn’t always understand her, but he liked being behind her fence. He liked Popeye and Ranger and Lady Di, her dogs. He tried not to think about the ones that were gone now. Maybe she’d given them away.
They passed tree farms, with all the trees growing the same size, identical, and Kendrick enjoyed watching their trunks pass in a blur. He was glad to be away from the empty houses.
“Get me a station,” Grandpa Joe said.
The radio was Kendrick’s job. Unlike Dad, Grandpa Joe never kept the radio a secret.
Ghost Summer, Stories Page 24